PERCEPTIONS OF LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS, PERSONALITY HARDINESS, AND INTERACTION PATTERNS OF NURSE MANAGERS IN PARTICIPATORY AND TRADITIONAL SETTINGS.
Contributors: Temple University.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 109
Subjects: Health Sciences, Health Care Management.; Health Sciences, Nursing.; Psychology, Industrial.; Speech Communication.; Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations.
Description: Although there are declared participatory management systems in nursing throughout the world, there are very few empirical investigations which provide information to nursing departments concerning the state of agreement between leadership behaviors and stated organization philosophy. The purpose of this study is to determine if differences exist in the leadership approach between nurse managers from participatory management settings and traditional, centrally controlled departments. Managerial consideration, structure, personality characteristics labeled hardiness, and interaction patterns were explored.

A convenience sample of 88 nurse managers was derived from eight healthcare institutions. Instrumentation included the Leadership Opinion Questionnaire (Fleishman, 1989) to measure nurse manager leadership attitudes towards consideration and structure, and the Personal Views Survey (Kobasa & Maddi, 1984) to measure the personality characteristics labeled hardiness. Examination of nurse manager verbal interaction patterns employed during taped staff meetings were assessed for 10 nurse managers from the traditional group and 11 from the participatory group using an application of the Flanders Interaction Analysis System (Casper, Amidon, & Morey, 1988).

Analysis of variance procedures indicated that the two groups of nurse managers were similar on perceptions of leadership consideration, leadership structure, personality characteristic hardiness, and interaction patterns. A significant relationship was found between the leadership consideration and hardiness variables for the participatory group (r =.44, p $<$.001). A significant inverse relationship between the leadership structure variable and hardiness was found for the traditional group (r = $-$.32, p $<$.05). Nurse managers were found to engage in direct influence behavior most of the time. These findings suggest that in addition to organization structure change that work towards the development of hardy healthy personalities and interaction skills are most important.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-07, Section: B, page: 3541.

Thesis (PH.D.)--TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, 1993.

School code: 0225.